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50 killed and 47 injured by Iraq car bomb, violence

* Japan to write-off $6.1 billion owed by Baghdad

BAGHDAD: More than 50 Iraqis were killed in attacks on Thursday, including 30 in a car bomb attack on a hospital, as violence picked up in the run-up to the December 15 general elections.

The bloodiest attack took place in Mahmudiyah, where a suicide bomber attempted to ram a booby-trapped car into a hospital compound. Thirty people died and 27 were wounded, including four US soldiers, said security sources.

“I was leaving the hospital with my one-and-a-half-year-old son in my arms when the explosion happened,” said Hoda Ali (30), wounded on her face and arms. “I was knocked down by the force of the blast and when I came to, my son was no longer in my arms.

I found him among the dead.” Also, the US military reported the deaths of two servicemen in a roadside bombing southwest of Baghdad, while four American soldiers were killed in a series of incidents on Wednesday.

The latest deaths, reported as Americans celebrated Thanksgiving, brought to at least 2,110 the number of US military personnel killed since the March 2003 invasion, according to the Pentagon. Later, a second car bomb blew up in a busy shopping district in Hilla, killing three people and wounding 13, said hospital officials.

In other violence, at least 10 Iraqis were shot dead in a series of attacks in Baghdad, including two children, six policemen, one army officer and an adviser to former prime minister Ayad Allawi. In Mahmudiyah, where the suicide bomber struck, an army colonel was killed in a separate roadside bomb explosion.

Near Baiji, two Iraqi soldiers were killed and seven wounded by a roadside bomb, while further north, near Hawijah, five people were shot dead, three of them soldiers, when gunmen opened fire on an army vehicle. Authorities also found the bodies of two men and two women, strangled or shot dead, in Yussufiyah.

Meanwhile, Japan sealed a deal with Iraq to forgive about $6.1 billion or 80 percent of the debt it is owed by the war-ravaged country in line with an international accord reached last year.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso exchanged notes on the deal with visiting Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari in Tokyo, said officials. Iraq is saddled with foreign debt estimated at 120 billion dollars, excluding reparations it owes Kuwait for the 1990 invasion and 1991 Gulf War, according to a report by the International Monetary Fund.

The Paris Club of 19 creditor countries, including the United States, Japan, Russia and European Union nations, agreed in November 2004 to write off 80 percent of the money it was owed by Iraq over three years.

The latest unrest comes just three weeks ahead of elections for a four-year parliament, the final stage in Iraq’s transition to democracy since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Iraqi government spokesman Leith Kubba warned that violence would likely increase in the coming weeks as rebels sought to disrupt the election campaign. With Iraqi officials expressing hope that a timetable will soon be set for the withdrawal of foreign forces and the US Congress clamouring for an exit strategy, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has hinted that a reduction in US forces could come “fairly soon.”

She said that as Iraqi security forces were trained to face the insurgency, the number of outside troops “is clearly going to come down.”

“The American forces are not going to be needed in the numbers that they are there for all that much longer,” she said on US television.

US troops in Iraq currently number about 158,000, up some 20,000 on their normal level because of a short-term force increase to ensure security for last month’s referendum on the constitution and the mid-December election.

US officials, including the ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, have clearly suggested however that the number would begin to drop early next year. afp

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